Get Your Hands Dirty (or not)!

This beauty is one of the most user-friendly composters out there!

Going green isn’t as hard as it might seem. The idea of composting might seem daunting, but it can actually be just as easy as throwing something in the trash. If you are itching to get started but feel like you don’t have a lot of time or money to invest in composting – have no fear! The Greater Victoria Composting Education Center provides a you a ton of information so you don’t have to do a bunch of research and offers resources at very affordable prices.

Just throw your organic waste into The Green Cone Digester (which you plant in your garden) and let nature do everything else. The lower black basket allows worms from your garden to enter the compost and break down the organic waste into a mulchy, nutrient rich substance that naturally disperses into the rest of your garden or yard. This is pretty much the most user friendly compost you could ever find! You don’t even have to worry about balancing out the nitrogen and carbon based elements like in other compost systems.

The center of course offers many other types of composting (from Vermi Composting to the Earth Machine) for anyone who is advanced or has more time to learn the ropes. The center also offers a variety of community classes for children and adults about composting.

What if you live in an apartment? If you are like me and the idea of Vermi Composting makes you cringe, Pedal to Petal is the perfect solution. This local grass-roots organization provides you with a 5 gallon clean plastic ice-cream bucket for you to throw your household organic waste. Once your bucket is full, they will pick it up by bicycle and leave you a clean one for a small $5 fee. Your organic waste is taken to their big compost bins and eventually given to local veggie growers as nutrient rich soil.

No need to worry, the bucket doesn’t smell as long as you line it with paper, and you can leave it in your kitchen! An average household of two adults will only need their bucket emptied about once a month (give or take) and, of course, Pedal to Petal will come as frequently as once a week if you like. My household waste has literally been reduced by half since I started using this service!

The best thing about composting is that it does drastically reduce the amount of garbage going into our landfills (by about 30% as per a recent CRD study). Composting directly improves the quality of our soil which impacts plant health and water conservation. If you are on the fence about composting, hop off and grab yourself an easy starter like the Green Cone Digester or a bucket from Pedal to Petal. Composting the easy way makes a huge impact, and you don’t even need to get your hands dirty (unless you want to).